Steppenwolf announces 2012-13 season

A production of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” directed by Austin Pendleton, a fresh staging of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Broadway hit “Good People,” a new play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, a remounting with a new cast of Anna D. Shapiro’s Broadway staging of “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” and Amy Herzog’s “Belleville” make up the 2012-13 subscription season at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, announced Wednesday.

The season also includes the return of the long-absent Moira Harris to the Steppenwolf stage; she appears in the January production of “The Birthday Party” alongside Sophia Sinise, the daughter of Harris and Steppenwolf co-founder Gary Sinise.

The season opens in September with K. Todd Freeman directing “Good People,” a moving drama about working-class folks in Boston, with a cast that includes Alana Arenas, Mariann Mayberry and Molly Regan.

Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Hat” follows in December, with “The Birthday Party” opening in January in the Upstairs Theatre and playing through May, also starring Francis Guinan, John Mahoney and Ian Barford.

Tina Landau will direct “Head of Passes” in April 2013, a piece commissioned from McCraney, the ensemble playwright behind the acclaimed “Brother/Sister Plays.” McCraney’s new play is set in the “distant present” at the mouth of the Mississippi River and will star Arenas, Freeman, Jon Michael Hill, Tim Hopper and James Vincent Meredith.

The season ends in June 2013, with Anne Kauffman directing “Belleville,” a much-admired play about married American ex-patriots living in Paris (he works for Doctors Without Borders; she is an aspiring actress), featuring Arenas, Kate Arrington and others yet to be cast. Kauffman directed the premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre in November.